Ill winds can buffet the best-laid plans

By BOB JENKINS

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 12, 2000

Into each life a little rain must fall. Or maybe a lot, accompanied by 90 mph winds.

Which is why your travel editor found himself rethinking his decision to skip his London hotel's breakfast Oct. 30 in favor of taking a cab to catch a train to reach the airport. . . .

Rethinking my decision during the 93 minutes I sat in the crowded train that had stopped heading for Gatwick Airport less than 15 minutes after starting.

The Gatwick Express had become the Gatwick Depressed. So had I.

The long wait by a tiny suburban station was not to be the only delay during my 171/2 hours of travel that day. Rather, it was just the first of a few aggravating lessons in the uncertainty of travel.

I have often written that planning is the key to helping make your trip a success. There are, however, some things for which you cannot plan. Did I mention the weather?

A storm labeled the worst in 13 years had been clobbering southern and middle England, beginning the evening before. There were 25 "severe flood warnings" issued, a tornado hit one village, and about three inches of rain caused the flooding of some tunnels serving London's massive subway system.

But the Gatwick Express rides almost entirely above ground, and I was climbing aboard a 7:40 departure from London's Victoria Station in order to make an 11:15 a.m. flight from Gatwick.

Having quickly stowed my one large suitcase and my rollaboard, I grabbed a nearby seat at a table. I felt a little smug as the car filled, but smugness turned to doubt when I heard the conductor call out to those just boarding:

"Never mind stacking your bags properly. We're going to get as many passengers on this train as possible because it may be the last one to Gatwick!"

Uh-oh.

The train left the station but halted a few minutes later by a tiny suburban stop. The conductor in charge, service manager Daniel Wood, called out firmly in a voice tinged with a Cockney accent: "Service on the trains to Gatwick has been halted, due to concerns about trees or limbs having been blown on to the track."

Time seemed to drag as passengers chatted with each other -- my tablemates were a couple from Iowa and a young French woman headed for Bordeaux -- and dialed or answered their cell phones.

Clearly a man growing into his leadership role in a time of emergency, Wood would occasionally appear and boom out some update -- shortly after 8 a.m., for instance, he intoned that buses or taxis would be sent for "because with the airport closed (our first news of this) for inbound and outbound flights, there is no reason to go to Gatwick."

The gloom inside our coach matched the skies outside. Several people hefted their suitcases out of the car, hoping to find cabs to the airport.

More than an hour later, an hour of smiling mindlessly at small talk and blocking out thoughts of breakfast, came the day's first sunshine. At 9:13, our train lurched gently forward. The only announcement about our destination was Wood's response to a passenger's query:

"We are going to Gatwick, sir. There is nothing else down this way."

We arrived at 9:56 -- the half-hour trip having taken just over 2 hours and 15 minutes. I rolled my suitcases to the Virgin Atlantic Airways counter, where I was one of just two passengers.

"You are likely to leave today, sir," the clerk assured me. "Your plane is the only one we have at the airport currently."

Smugness returned, nestling in among the hunger and relief.

Heading for the McDonald's for my long-delayed breakfast, I noticed that my plane's departure was not listed on the overhead monitors.

Nor would it be until 11:08, seven minutes before the originally scheduled take-off. Flight VS027 to Orlando appeared on the screens with this directive: Wait in Lounge.

I did as instructed, craning my neck to read the screens while I caught up on news of American elections and American football. But I kept checking the departure screens, and my optimism began to fade: There were five other Wait-in-Lounge directives for passengers on planes originally set to take off before mine.

There were also a number of cancellations.

Suddenly the screen listed a gate for my flight, and up popped Ol' Man Optimism again. Maybe I would catch my connecting flight from Orlando to Tampa, the last one of the day.

By 11:40 I was belted into my window seat aboard the Calypso Queen, the 747 headed to the Sunshine State. I noted approvingly the brilliant sunshine streaming in my window.

But long after the Queen's doors were closed, we just sat at the gate. It became uncomfortably warm, with no air conditioning. I began to sweat.

More than an hour after the doors had been closed, the captain announced "We've just missed, by three minutes, our assigned departure slot. . . . It'll probably be in an hour (before our next slot), but I'll do some bloody negotiating to see if we can do better."

Unlike my Gatwick Express hero, Mr. Wood, the captain had devolved into using a slangy curse word to describe his "negotiations." He seemed upset, perhaps because, as he told us, he had been pulled from a flight to Barbados to drive this jumbo jet to less-alluring Orlando.

I wondered if he had air conditioning in the cockpit. If so, maybe I could talk my way into an "interview" with him as we passed time at Gate 34.

At 1:21 the captain announced he had "negotiated" our departure time to 2:05. Sorry, Cap, but another 40 minutes in this oven is going to dehydrate me. Just as I got to my rollaboard in the overhead bin and grabbed a souvenir T-shirt to change into, the captain announced we were pushing back from the gate.

We quickly reached our cruising altitude -- and a 100-mph headwind. My three-hour-and-25-minute layover in Orlando was already two-thirds gone. Though the cabin was finally cooling, I was feeling weak -- from loss of fluids and loss of layover time.

We landed in Orlando nine hours and four minutes after leaving Gatwick's runway. I had less than an hour to leave the Calypso Queen, get through Immigration, round up my checked suitcase, get through Customs, get to the Delta counter and have my bag ticketed to Tampa, then make it to my gate for the last commuter flight of the day to Tampa.

Now moving with a purpose, I trotted past a Virgin Atlantic flight attendant beyond the jetway, excusing myself by saying I had a connecting flight to catch. "When?" she asked.

"In 50 minutes."

"Come with me," she said, hustling me down to the baggage carousel reserved for luggage ticketed to passengers in Premium Economy (me) and Upper Class. My bag was perhaps the 10th one onto the carousel from a plane probably holding 1,000 suitcases. Lady Luck, is that you?

My flight attendant had already called a co-worker assigned to help with baggage.

"He has to catch a flight to Tampa, soon," she explained, handing me over.

This man took the checked bag from my hand and rolled it past one of the two Customs officers stationed nearby. "I have a connecting flight," I announced as I handed over my passport and Customs declaration card. He took the card, handed back the passport and said, "Go connect."

I followed the VA worker at a rapid clip into Orlando's main terminal. He explained that I would not have to go to the Delta check-in counter, despite the fact I had a bag to check aboard and no boarding pass, only an itinerary from my travel agent.

He led me down a hallway and up to the Delta agent at the gate podium.

"This is a through bag from London," the VA worker declared.

"Certainly," acknowledged the Delta agent.

Their exchange seemed to indicate that these things happen all the time and that, if I traveled more, I would have known this.

The Delta agent filled out a tag with an elastic band on it, instructing me to "Put this on the bag and leave it at the end of the jetway; they'll put it aboard."

I turned to thank my VA guardian angel and to give him a tip, but he was already moving away.

"Oh, no thanks, sir. Happy to help," he said, hurrying back toward his baggage carousel before I could even ask his name.

I turned to the Delta agent, who handed me my boarding pass.

I had 20 minutes to kill before I could board my flight to Tampa. I spent it feeling thankful.

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